Sick and Homesick

(by Danelle)

I’ll have to admit. I’m pretty homesick right now. I’d like to be home. I’d like a hot shower or bath. I’d like a fried egg on toast. I’d like some orange juice with lots of pulp on ice. I’d like to lie down on a couch and just sleep to the sound of cupboards opening and closing and pots being stirred it, the sound of mom cooking. What do all of these wishes have in common? These are all things I like when I’m sick. I am sick. The worst of it is over actually, I hope anyway. And I’m homesick.

Sunday I got kind of nauseated in the afternoon. I ended up throwing up multiple times until about 1am. Then, when the nausea finally did go away, my body ached. It’s that kind of ache you have when you have a fever, it’s like your bones and blood hurt. Massage doesn’t even fix it. I didn’t feel like I had a fever, but my thermometer broke. I wasn’t about to go to the clinic in the middle of the night to borrow one either. Poor Kevin. I was so restless. With my body aching the way it was, it felt better to move than to hold still. I finally took a Tylenol and got to sleep around 3am. The next morning, I though maybe that was it, but no. The aching came back and I had a slight headache. I was so thankful that I wasn’t nauseated again though. Then I had a low grade fever.

The only nice thing about being sick is that it’s like a mini vacation. You get to be in bed all day. Although, this wasn’t fun. I’d much rather have been at the clinic. I thought with the amount of vomiting I had, it was maybe some bad food I ate or maybe I had caught a little flu bug. That’s still a possibility, but just to be sure it wasn’t malaria, I started Demal as well. Demal is this herbal spray stuff that we are using as malaria prophylaxis and first line treatment. It’s nice because it’s natural, non chemical and it stimulates your own body’s malarial antibodies. It actually has been shown to decrease the symptoms of malaria and be a treatment. So we are trying it. The thing about Demal though is that it’s so time consuming. You spray it under your tongue every 5 minutes for awhile, then every half hour for like 6 hours. Then if it doesn’t get better you spray it every 5 minutes for even longer.

Luckily for me, it seemed to work after the first 6 hours. Today I’m not achy, just weak, and don’t have a headache or temperature. So I don’t know if I just had a flu bug and it just so happened that my symptoms went away by coincidence when I started Demal or if I had malaria, but either way, being sick is never fun and it really makes a person homesick.

The other day our fellow student missionary, Josh, was reminding us about something that one of our teachers at training said. He said there was something like 4 stages of language learning.

Stage 1: High motivation and energy, but very low skill
Stage 2: Low motivation and energy, and also very low sill
Stage 3: I don’t remember the other 2 actually, something like still lower motivation but improving skill and then stage 4 energy because able to communicate effectively and have skill.

Well, we are in stage 2. Being here for just about 3 months now, and still having very low language skills is very tiring and discouraging. Progress is so slow and low motivation does NOT help. I don’t really feel connected to anyone here. How can you when you can’t talk? There are occasional moments of laughter and times where you feel connected because they shared in a blooper or were teaching you something. But it’s just hard.

I definitely find myself just wanting to spend as much time as possible with Kevin and find it painful to have to go out and interact. After awhile, you kind of get used to not understanding and can easily just think about something else in church for example so you don’t fall asleep.

I am not a shy person, but I’m not exactly a chatty Kathy either. I like to do things with people, I like having a group of people around, but I like to watch more and just throw a word out here and there. But to just come up with whatever to talk about with no real purpose is difficult for me a lot of the time. I think Kevin struggles with this even more than I do. He’s not so big on small talk. He likes to talk with purpose about deeper things.

So, just pushing through this stage, and going out anyway, and trying to make friends anyway, even though I don’t feel like it. We really need prayer in this area. It definitely has been our biggest failure and continues to be our biggest struggle.

I’m not attached at all here right now. I could go home and not miss anyone. It goes in stages. Sometimes I feel like I could stay for another year, other times I feel like I can barely get through this year. But I need to remember why we are here. We are here to serve these people and to let God grow us in whatever ways He needs to.

I am SO thankful God is SO much bigger and more consistent than our feelings. Being homesick is an awful feeling. But we continue to pray for the fruits of the Spirit, and choose to act on our prayers. “For the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.” Gal 5:22.
Oh how we need those fruits. But before we can bear those fruits, we need the Spirit. So pray for the Holy Spirit. Pray for Him in our lives here and in your lives there.